Posted on 08/15/2017 5:16:53 AM PDT by Strac6
Trivia?
Who was the Battalion Commander, who was also his own Tank Commander, who drove the first tank through the German lines to relieve the 101st at Bastogne?
Creighton Abrams.
I am 70 and way past my prime. Maybe if I had kept at it..
My bucket list is full as is and since it is something I have done already I will look to something new.
I don't have a problem with that...at all.In BCT I just about soiled myself the night we crawled under barbed wire with an M-60 being fired over our heads.They told us they were live rounds and I believed them...at the time,at least.Today I recognize that for safety reasons they probably wouldn't have fired live rounds but,instead,they just wanted us to *believe* it.
I still remember the tracers going overhead....almost 50 years later.
Airborne lawyers?? Lemme guess....courts-martial behind the lines? ;-)
They were live rounds. Just fired at an elevation of 12 feet over the ground. You could have stood up and jumped and not have gotten hit. But scary no matter what.
OK,that makes sense.When I think of it the tracers didn't appear to be going by all that close to the ground...or us.All that was ringing in my ears at the moment were the repeated warnings "do *not* lift your head".
Ding Ding Ding
We have a winner!!!
More like, “So, Colonel... ah.... how can we get away with.....”
I was FA in RVN, but branch transferred after Law School. Combat Arms experience greatly “improves the hearing” of those one is giving advice to.
It’s like a USAF reservist doctor I play golf with, an ophthalmologist. He can sometimes be the final authority when a Air Force pilot has a eye problem with their physical.
If he has to turn them down, the (young stud official hero) pilot turned down will usually start to give him a rash of s**t about “what do you know about real flying” etc.
He then takes off his white “clinical coat”. They then see his Command Pilot wings as a B-52 driver. He was a hot shot in Vietnam, promoted ahead of his peer group, etc, until he lost his own flight physical due to diabetes.
So the Blue Suiters sent him to medical school, and now he is an O-6 “semi-retired on waivers” Flight Surgeon who everyone listens to... and he gets in a few hours of BUFF “stick time” every year, just to keep him happy.
Us old farts can still hold our own! :)
If we were fighting that war with todays average 18-20 year old we would be SOL.
As it is the military has had to raise it’s max age to 40something just to fill the ranks.
That only raises my admiration for the young people who do volunteer.
I always figured you had to be tough to serve in a rifle company but it took an extra touch of crazy to volunteer for airborne.
“Who was the Battalion Commander, who was also his own Tank Commander, who drove the first tank through the German lines to relieve the 101st at Bastogne?”
Would that be Lt Charles Boggess, commander of the jumbo Sherman “King Cobra”?
Yes, I had to look it up!
Very interesting story.
The King Cobra now resides in the National Museum of the US Army near Fort Belvoir.
New addition to my bucket list!
Bomb squads were kept busy at fake bomb calls. I photographed them in action, and received no financial reimbursement; unlike the Navy, where they were added onto regular paychecks in long strings.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.